


Baby Bea's Ready for Home

by a_novel_idea



Series: The Adventures of Baby Bea [2]
Category: Justified
Genre: Cute, Established Relationship, F/M, First Meetings, Kid Fic, Short & Sweet, brief mentions of violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-27
Updated: 2018-05-27
Packaged: 2019-05-14 14:24:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14771357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_novel_idea/pseuds/a_novel_idea
Summary: This is the story of how Tim and Auggie meet.





	Baby Bea's Ready for Home

**Author's Note:**

> yo what's up. first story of 2018. hopefully it won't be the last. probs more Baby Bea to come.

The next time Raylan sees Auggie and Bea is the morning Tim returns from Ohio; he’d been filling in for the Salt Lake City SWAT sniper who’d fallen from a building and broken his leg. Auggie is sitting behind Tim’s desk, bouncing Bea on her knees. The baby is wearing a white romper with whales printed on it, and Raylan can’t help but smile back when she looks over and squeals at him.

“Mornin’, Raylan,” Auggie says.

“Morning, Auggie. Morning, Bea.”

The baby babbles, waving both of her chubby fists in the air. 

“Can I ask you a question?” Raylan asks, probably before he’s really thought about it. 

“You just did,” Auggie smirks, “but I have a feeling you’re going to ask me another.”

“Now I don’t mean to be crude,” he says, and Auggie’s eyebrows raise just a hair, “but how did you - well, Tim - I just mean - ”

“Raylan, I don’t think you  _ do  _ know what you mean,” she laughs.

“Just, how did you two….” he sort of trails off, wiggling his fingers in Bea’s direction.

“Well,” Auggie says very seriously, “when a Mommy and a Daddy love each other very much - ”

Raylan cuts her off by throwing a sugar packet that came with his morning coffee at her, though it falls short. Auggie laughs.

“You mean how Tim and I met? Or how we decided to have a baby?”

“The first one.”

 

***

 

“You touch my ass one more time and I’ll put you through that fucking table,” she snarls, hand firm to the point of pain pinching around the man’s wrist. 

Tim is supposed to be the sober one for the night - which really just means he won’t be quite as drunk as the others - and the guys he’s with have turned to telling the same stories they tell every time they drink. This seems much more interesting. 

The woman in question is maybe his height, if not a little taller, with thick brown hair slowly falling from where she had pulled it up on top of her head. She’s wearing jeans, cowboy boots, and a t-shirt with the bar’s logo on it. She has her hand around the wrist of a man a good six inches and a hundred pounds heavier than she is.

“Aw, c’mon, sweetheart. S’what you’re here for, right?” the guy slurs, using his other hand to cop another feel.

Without responding to him, the waitress plants a hand on the man’s face, hooks her ankle around his knee to pull his feet out from under him, and does indeed smash his head into the table. The guy’s friends start to take offense, so Tim throws back the rest of his whiskey, and saunters over.

At the sight of him, the three men that haven’t had their faces smashed into the table slowly sit back down, but Tim doesn’t pay them much mind. Standing closer to her, he can tell the woman smells more like laundry detergent than sweat and beer, and that she is still very close to tearing up the man on the floor. 

“I’ve got this, thanks,” she tells him, obviously assuming that he’s come to her rescue.

He nods, bends over where the man on the floor can see him, and says, “Evening, Corporal.”

The man groans. “Evening, Staff Sergeant.”

“I’d stay where she put you until your friends are ready to leave.”

“Yes, sir.”

Tim stands back straight, looks at the waitress, and says, “Could you point me in the direction of the restroom?”

She throws her thumb over one shoulder and goes back to what she was doing.

 

***

 

Two nights later, after a long shift at the training school full of up and think-they’re-coming hotshots that think they’re going to be the next big man on campus, Tim goes back to the bar. He’s still in uniform, mostly because he knew that if he went home he wouldn’t leave again, and he really really wants that drink.

Seeing as it’s a Monday, the place is pretty dead, so Tim takes a seat at the bar, and orders two consecutive shots of whiskey, then a few fingers of bourbon to take a little slower. He’s down to less than a finger when someone sets a new glass in front of him.

When he looks up, it’s the woman from last night. Sitting closer in a little better light, he can see the freckles under her left eye, and the frown pulling at the corners of her mouth. Her t-shirt is a different color, but sports the same logo and her hair isn’t as close to coming loose as it was.

“Thanks,” she says gruffly, “but I didn’t ask for your help.”

“I know you didn’t.”

“Good.”

She turns and goes, disappearing into the back. Tim is trying to figure out what just happened, when the bartender who took his order before steps in front of him. 

“Sorry about her,” he says. “She doesn’t like it when people step in on her fights.”

“No offense, man, but she’s maybe five-foot-eight and a buck-fifty.”

“I tell her that all the time,” the guy sighs, “but there’s no convincing Auggie. She’s as stubborn as they come.”

“I can see that.”

“Even if she won’t thank you, I will. Wouldn’t be the first time she’s gotten herself in more trouble than she can handle.”

“I can hear you!” comes Auggie’s voice from the back room.

The bartender flinches, but smiles.

 

***

 

Tim’s flight for the sandbox leaves in less than forty-eight hours, and he can’t sleep. At about two in the am he'd given up tossing and turning, thrown his sneakers on, and decided on a run. Now he’s standing in the snack isle of the only 24/7 grocery anywhere near base, wondering whether or not it would be worth it to eat a family sized bag of BBQ chips on his walk back. Before he can make up his mind, someone rounds the corner, and Tim being Tim he can’t not identify them.

He isn’t expecting it to be the waitress from the bar. She looks different under clear lighting, her brown hair more caramel than chocolate, her freckles just a touch more prominent. She’s still wearing a shirt with the bar logo, but instead of jean and boots, she’s wearing shorts and sandals. She got headphones in her ears, and a basket in her hands, and she looks just as surprised to see him as he does for her.

“Hey,” she says, plucking her headphones out.

“Hey.”

“Little early for the Army to be up isn’t it?”

“Little late to just be getting home from the bar,” he counters.

“Touche. I’m Auggie. Figured I’d introduce myself since it seems like we’re gonna keep running into each other.”

“Tim. Got a little less than forty-eight before I ship out, so you’re free and clear after that.”

“That’s a shame. You’re alright in a fight. For someone that didn’t lift a finger, anyway.”

Tim’s eyebrow ticks. 

“Thought you didn’t need my help.”

“I didn’t. But I wouldn’t have been able to take on his three buddies all at once either. Tell you what, finish shopping and I’ll take you for pancakes. There’s a diner down the street.”

“What if I like waffles better than pancakes?” Tim asks.

“Then you’re a heathen. Chop, chop, Army boy. I’m hungry.”

 

***

 

“And that’s the story how how we met,” Auggie says. “The stuff of fairytales, right?”

“It’ll make a great Disney movie some day,” Raylan agrees. “So about Bea - ”

Before Raylan can inquire about another story, Tim steps out of the locker room, freshly showered and still looking like Hell chews him up and spat him back out. Auggie stands to meet him, smiling softly, greeting him quietly enough that Raylan can’t hear what she says.

“Ready for home?” she asks him.

“Ready for home,” Tim agrees.


End file.
